1Hagey Laboratory for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine, Department of Surgery, Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA2Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA3Department of Surgery, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA

Received 27 October 2015; Revised 3 January 2016; Accepted 13 January 2016

Abstract

Chronic wounds are a source of substantial morbidity for patients and are a major financial burden for the healthcare system. There are no current therapies that reliably improve nonhealing wounds or reverse pathological scarring. Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are a promising source of novel cell-based therapies due to the ease of their harvest and their integral role in the native wound repair process. Recent work has addressed the problems of loss of plasticity and off-target delivery through use of modern bioengineering techniques. Here we describe the applications of MSCs harvested from different sources to the wound healing process and recent advances in delivery of MSCs to targeted sites of injury.